Medical Themes and Metaphors in Urhobo Oral Song-Poetry

Abstract

The discourse on the therapeutic function of literature has, in recent years, been given critical attention in Nigeria. However, little interest has been paid to the representation of illnesses and healing in the field of African oral literature. Oral texts like songs, folktales, myth and incantation, foreground physical and mental conditions. In such autochthonous societies, the totality of the people’s belief about different ailments, social disorders, death, life and the afterlife, constitute the entire gamut of the ingredients of their oral and artistic productions. They represent an essential aspect of the people’s indigenous knowledge system handed down from generation to generation. This is because the African people express the depth of their feelings and emotions in their oral composition and cultural practices. The aim is to help younger generation to be conscious of their mental health and spiritual wellbeing. This work is therefore motivated by the need to interrogate the nexus between oral poetry and medicalisation, which falls within the domain of the medical humanities. It undertakes a close investigation of the diverse spheres of metaphorical representations, allusions and themes inherent in selected oral texts in connection with Psychiatry, ill-health and well-being in Urhobo oral song-poetry. The work relies on the sociological approach to literature that emphasizes the extrinsic relationship between art and society to determine the formal structure, themes, and images of ill-health, disease, pathological disorders and wellness that have endeared the people to their environment for many decades. The work argues that the mental health of the individual relates significantly to the overall wellbeing of the society; it engenders the maintenance of the cosmic order, the relationship between the individual and other segments of the psychic environment – the physical and spiritual.